It is utterly humiliating for honourable members of parliament to be seen stashing bread rolls in their handbags during breakfast for their next meal! (Pictured: Obert Gutu)The true tenets of democracy are severely compromised in countries where one of the arms of the State, in most cases the executive, becomes super-strong and domineering at the expense of the others. Typically, in most if not all totalitarian states, the executive arm is very powerful and it literally relegates the legislature and the judiciary to subsidiary roles where they become weak appendages of the executive. Proceeding on the assumption that Zimbabwe should not be a totalitarian state, it follows that we need a strong and independent legislature as well as an independent judiciary that is always ready to dispense justice without fear or favour. Anything short of this is clearly not acceptable.
Since independence in 1980, Zimbabwe’s parliament has been virtually dominated by one political party. As a result, most pieces of legislation, no matter how controversial, such as the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act ( AIPPA) and the Public Order and Security Act (POSA), have been railroaded through parliament with relative ease.
For democracy to thrive, there is always a need to have a vibrant opposition in parliament – able to play a genuine oversight role over the activities of the executive. The inclusive government in Zimbabwe gives us a unique parliamentary set-up where we virtually do not have an opposition in parliament.
I am a legislator in the seventh parliament of Zimbabwe that was voted into office on March 29, 2008. My experience so far has been anything but rosy.
We have a parliament that is so severely underfunded that it is unable to hold proper parliamentary sittings. In most cases, parliament just sits for a few days and/or hours before a long adjournment is announced. For all the months that I have been a member of parliament, the legislative agenda has been virtually non-existent. Only a few pieces of legislation have been dealt with so far: the Constitution of Zimbabwe Amendment No. 19 Act, the Zimbabwe National Security Council Act, the Finance Act and the Appropriation Act. New pieces of legislation to enhance Zimbabwe’s democratisation agenda have simply not been forth-coming from the inclusive government.
Economic challenges
I am very mindful of the prevailing economic and financial challenges that are being faced by our country. I am also acutely aware of the fact that the inclusive government is cash-strapped and that it has to attend to many competing interests. Be that as it may, I humbly urge the inclusive government to take note of the debilitating poverty and destitution that is afflicting the majority of our parliamentarians. Most of them cannot even afford to buy a single meal in the hotels in which they are booked during parliamentary sessions.
Lest I am misunderstood by the readers, I am not by any stretch of the imagination suggesting that legislators are a special breed of Zimbabweans who deserve to be pampered. No. All I am stating is that it is dehumanising and utterly humiliating for honourable members of parliament to be seen stashing bread rolls in their handbags during breakfast for their next meal!
Similarly, it is an unmitigated embarrassment for an honourable member of parliament to tour his/her constituency using public transport simply because the Treasury has not made available the requisite funds to purchase motor vehicles for parliamentarians.
I also humbly urge my fellow legislators not to be cry babies. We should not expect to earn a living by getting into parliament. First and foremost, being a parliamentarian is a public duty; to serve Zimbabwe and not to have Zimbabwe serve you.
Honest income
You will be terribly disappointed if you think that you will get rich by simply getting into parliament. We should endeavour to be enterprising and thus ensure that we have some decent and honest sources of income other than the US$100 allowance that we are getting from parliament every month.
For those of my colleagues who saw wisdom in grabbing motor vehicles that were recently doled out to them by the Reserve Bank, I humbly urge them to interrogate their consciences and ascertain whether they did the right thing for themselves and for the institution of parliament. Whilst there is absolutely nothing wrong with legislators being allocated vehicles, I am strongly of the view that proper procedures ought and must be followed if we are to maintain and uphold the dignity of the institution of parliament. Greed will never take us anywhere.
Parliament has basically three main functions: to legislate, to represent the people and to oversee the activities of the executive arm. A parliament that fails to carry out any of these three main functions is therefore a serious impediment to the development of democracy. A parliament that merely rubberstamps the actions and decisions of the executive is a catalyst towards the development of a dictatorship.
Zimbabwe desperately needs a robust, independent and well-funded parliament that will genuinely play a decisive role in the democratisation of Zimbabwe. Here is hoping that when parliament resumes sitting on June 16, we are going to be kept busy by dealing with new pieces of legislation as envisaged in the global political agreement (GPA).